The Youngest Dowager: A Regency romance(4)
He glanced across at the widow and saw she was sitting with perfect poise, her gaze fixed on the carved over-mantel of the fireplace. She looked composed, almost frozen, but as he watched he became aware that the jet drop earrings were trembling against her white neck. He wondered if she were normally so poised or whether her deep grief had frozen her heart.
He did some rapid mental calculations. As far as he could recall his cousin had been forty-five years old. This woman could scarcely be more than twenty.
He realised that Mr Hope had droned his way through the minor bequests and the servants had filed out of the room, leaving only the immediate relatives and two men he had been introduced to – Doctor Robertson and the family chaplain, the Reverend Mr Field.
After another four more pages of interminable legal phrases Mr Hope regarded his numbed audience over the top of the vellum and announced, ‘In essence the position is straightforward. The title and the estate, both entailed and unentailed, with the exception of that in the Countess’s marriage portion and the lifetime occupation of the Dower House, descends to the male heir of the late Earl.’
Chapter Two
Marissa had been struggling to stay focused on the legal jargon, but this shook her into speech. ‘But my husband has no son.’
Mr Hope swept on, a touch of colour in his sallow cheeks. ‘The matter is delicate, but none the less it is my duty to tell you that under these circumstances it is normal, and prudent, to wait a certain number of months before the succession can be, as it were, clarified.’
It suddenly dawned on Marissa that Mr Hope, that dry lawyer, meant that they all had to wait to see if she was pregnant.
Without thinking, she blurted out, ‘But there is no need to wait.’
Aunt Augusta muttered, ‘Hush, my dear. Not in front of the gentlemen.’
‘No.’ The thought of the whole household watching, waiting, week after week, studying her looks, her health, her mood, for signs she was with child, was insupportable. Better to get it over with now. ‘I can assure you, Mr Hope, that there is no vestige of doubt that my lord is without a direct heir.’
Mr Hope snatched off his eyeglasses in agitation and looked wildly at the doctor and Lady Augusta. They stared blankly back at him until he said, ‘Dr Robertson, Lady Augusta, perhaps if I may prevail upon you to retire to another place with the Countess and discuss this matter further?’
Scarlet to her ear-tips, Marissa swept out of the room towards her bedchamber, followed by Aunt Augusta and the doctor. Her head high, she dared not look at anyone else, but she was acutely aware of Marcus Southwood as he rose when she passed him.
Then all thoughts of anyone else left her as she sat in her room, whispering answers to Dr Robertson’s tactful questions. But her mind was only partly with him. It was in this very chamber only a week ago she had had to tell her lord that once again she had failed in her duty and that she was not carrying his heir.
He had never used words to reproach her, but his disappointment had sent him out to ride furiously across the frozen parkland where small drifts of snow still lingered. It was one of those which had concealed the rabbit hole that had tripped his horse, pitching the Earl head-first onto the iron-hard ground to break his neck in an instant.
Marissa knew it was her failure as a wife, her lack of duty to her lord, that had killed him. Her eyes filled with tears at the thought and Aunt Augusta held up her hand to stop the flow of questions from the doctor. ‘Enough. Surely you are satisfied with what the Countess has told you?’
‘Indeed, I am.’ The doctor leaned across and patted her clasped hands in an avuncular fashion. ‘You have been very brave and very frank, my dear lady, and in doing so have been a great help to those administering the late Earl’s estate. But it is a melancholy thought that the direct line must cease.’ He broke off abruptly and Marissa thought she saw Aunt Augusta gave him a sharp kick on the ankle.
Dry-eyed, with her head held high, Marissa resumed her seat in the library and the gentlemen went back to their positions. The doctor had a rapid, whispered conversation with the lawyer who nodded and took up his papers once more.
‘I am in a position to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that the title, honours and estates of the third Earl of Longminster pass immediately to his heir, the fourth Earl, Marcus St Laurence Southwood of Jamaica, who by great good fortune is with us today. My lord.’ He stood up and bowed to the blond stranger, who acknowledged the salute with equal gravity.
She had failed in her duty and the title and all that went with it was passing to the son of a man estranged from the family. She should be mortified. But Marissa was conscious of nothing more than a vast sense of relief. Now she could relinquish this great house, this mausoleum which so chilled her soul and deadened her spirits, and move to the Dower House. It would be someone else’s responsibility to manage the impeccable running of the Palladian splendour which her husband had created. She wondered how swiftly such a move could be effected. Soon, please, make it soon.
Marcus watched the brief play of emotions over the pale face, unable to interpret the Countess’s expression. Surely it had not been relief? No. it must have simply been thankfulness that this ordeal of the will-reading was finally at an end. He was acutely aware that his own presence, his very appearance, must be a painful reminder to her of her loss. But he was trapped here now. He could not leave, return to the West Indies, not yet. Now he was responsible for this huge estate and all its people, including her.